


Who we are

by felineranger



Series: The Todster Files [4]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-16 00:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5806024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felineranger/pseuds/felineranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Series 8</p><p>Todhunter muses on everything that's changed, including Lister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who we are

  
It’s been more than three months now, and Todhunter still hasn’t come to terms with it. Not truly. If there had been some kind of cataclysmic event he could remember, some kind of marker, then it might be easier, but there’s nothing. Not even the strange but comfortingly familiar time-skip of a booze blackout (not that there’s been many of them, not since his Academy days). He feels like a man who has stepped out of his front room, only to find the rest of his house has been knocked down around him while he was busy watching TV and he didn’t hear a thing.

It’s not just him. They’re all stumbling around the ship acting desperately as if nothing has changed, doing their jobs and trying to pretend everything is normal; as if the bulldozers of time haven’t obliterated everything else they ever knew outside of these metal walls. It’s the same for everyone. Except Lister, of course. He doesn’t have the privilege of being able to pretend that nothing happened in those milliseconds when the rest of the crew blinked and the universe as they knew it collapsed. And if Todhunter can’t wrap his head around the situation, then he really can’t wrap his head around Lister.

He’s amazed that Lister is still sane. From what he can gather, over the last few years, those bulldozers have repeatedly smashed their way through every fragile construction of normality he’s tried to build for himself. He’s told Todhunter stories about things that happened in those strange missing years; sometimes jokily over drinks, sometimes quietly in the darkness after making love, sometimes dropped haphazardly into conversations. He’ll never forget the time they were having dinner and Lister, playing pensively with his food, suddenly piped up with, “I was a chicken once, you know.” However well this budding relationship seems to be going, sometimes the gulf separating their experiences feels as wide as the Milky Way. Sane or not, there is no denying that Lister has changed.

It had hit home when the first party of roaming GELF’s found them. Lister had offered to head the security team to meet them in the landing bay and Todhunter had automatically protested. “It could be dangerous,” he’d told him earnestly, “Let the Ship Patrol handle it.”  
Before his astonished eyes, Lister had scooped up one of the huge bazookoids and quickly loaded and shouldered it with an ease and familiarity that was both slightly frightening and - god help him - alarmingly sexy. Lister clocked his stunned expression and flashed him a cheeky but slightly condescending grin. “Relax. I’ll be fine.”

He’d watched nervously from the gantry as Lister stood at the head of the small armed group facing the visitors, with Kryten beside him to translate. “Tell them we’re willing to trade, but we won’t stand for any nonsense. And tell ‘em nobody’s getting smegging married, alright?” When the deal was struck and the GELF’s firmly sent on their way, Lister had glanced up at him and smiled reassuringly. He’d managed a smile back, but it was sickly and half-hearted because he knew that the boy he’d taken on that date - forever and not long ago - would never have been able to hold that gun with such conviction.

It wasn’t long after that that they’d had their first Simulant drill. The two of them had been urgently summoned to the drive room, where a ship had been picked up on the long-range scanners. The captain and officers had stood around the screens, pale and visibly frightened. “They’re just watching us,” the young console officer had told Lister, his voice shaking. “No handshake, no communication channels opened, nothing.”  
“Probably just a derelict,” Lister leaned over the desk, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.  
“They’re not drifting. They’re following a course.”  
“Collision?”  
“Negative.”

“It’s them, isn’t it?” another officer stammered behind them, “The simulants you warned us about. They’ve found us.”  
“Chill out,” Lister told him without looking around, “It could be anyone, it could be no-one.”  
“He said they’re following a course.”  
“The computer could still be functioning even if the crew are gone. Let’s see what they do.”  
“Are you crazy?” Hollister interjected angrily, “You’re suggesting we just wait for them to come to us?”  
“No point running,” Lister replied calmly, “Not on this ship. We’re too big and too slow.”  
“So what are we supposed to do?”  
“Send out a scouter.”  
“But then they’ll know for certain we’re here!”  
“And we’ll know for certain who’s out there. If it’s simulants they won’t wait for the scouter to dock. They’ll shoot it down, give themselves away.”  
“And if they do?”  
“Then we’ve got time to put together a plan and assemble a defence squad before they get here.”

Todhunter had watched, his emotions a strange mix of pride and disquiet, as Lister had taken control of the drive room. In the space of a moment, his lover seemed to have grown six inches. He gave orders like a seasoned general, while the captain stood back and sweated nervously in the corner. By the time the incoming ship was proved empty and the all-clear given, an irreversible shift had taken place. Todhunter could see it written clearly on the face of every officer in the room. When the time came, those men and women would follow the guy who used to clean out the vending machines over Hollister, without question. They would trust him with their lives.

Lister turned to him, oblivious, puffed out his cheeks with a playful cartoonish ‘phew’; and suddenly he was just Dave again. That night he’d tucked himself into the curve of Todhunter’s arm and snuggled against his chest like he needed him to protect him. Like he wasn’t the only person on the ship who actually had a handle on this mess. Lister is the captain now, and Todhunter isn’t sure he even knows it.

The best moments are when they’re alone together, curled on the sofa or entwined in the bunk. Those are the times when Lister’s armour drops away and he’s closest to being the Lister that Todhunter recognises; sweet and small and soft and smiley. That’s when they can both pretend that the last three million years didn’t happen, that the tender tentative first date that they’d shared really was mere months ago.

He’s thought fleetingly about asking Lister to marry him, whatever marriage still means out here. One of the few things Todhunter has just about managed to process is the fact that his wife and kids are now truly gone, not just absent. It hurts, but the fact that it has relatively no impact on his everyday life has helped, along with the soothing tonic of having Lister in his bed. But part of him knows it’s still too soon, for both of them, and he strongly suspects Lister would say no even if he was ready to ask. He knows Lister has secrets. There are things he’s not ready to talk about yet, and might never be. Like the mysterious scar low on his stomach. Or what the deal is with him and Kochanski. Or why he still persists in bunking with Rimmer, whom he’s always claimed to hate, on the rare nights they’re apart.

Todhunter tries not to dwell on any of these things. For now, the two of them are happy, or something very close to it. Yes, Lister has changed; he’s not the carefree cherub-faced boy Todhunter found so beguiling anymore. He’s harder, stronger, more serious, sometimes he’s even a little intimidating. He is a man. He is a warrior. But sometimes he’ll smile just so, and Todhunter can see the sweet boy who tussled with him in the bowling alley that fateful night still in there, wanting tenderness and reassurance, and he gives him as much of both as he can. Because he’s heard some of the stories, he’s seen some of the nightmares that Lister has, and he knows that mysterious scar on his stomach isn’t the only one he carries. And because now, perhaps even more so than three million years ago, he wants to protect what’s left of that sweet boy with his life.

 

 

 

 


End file.
